Bellew dumps on Cleverly for fighting Hawk

By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew (18-1, 12 KO’s) was disappointed and amused at seeing who WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (25-0, 12 KO’s) ended up fighting last Saturday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Instead of taking on an actual contender ranked in the top 15, Cleverly ended up fighting a guy named Shawn Hawk (23-3-1, 17 KO’s) in what turned out to be a really poor fight for Cleverly, Hawk and for the boxing fans that had to sit through it.

Bellew said to Sky Sports “I was offered Shawn Hawk, he was No 5 on the opponents we had for the fight and Roberto Bolonti was the highest possible ranked opponent I could have fought. It’s a joke of a fight [Cleverly-Hawk] in my opinion and where are you going with fights like that? You are supposed to be a world champion.”

I kind of agree with Bellew. That was a really disappointing choice of an opponent for Cleverly. It’s one if Cleverly had been fighting the best guys for the last couple of years and was taking a break to fight an easy option, but in this case Cleverly has had a number of less than appealing opponents since he was given the World Boxing Organization title by the WBO outside the ring, and Hawk was just one more mediocre opponent for Cleverly.

I could think of a ton of other options that I would have rather seen Cleverly fight and I think boxing fans would feel the same way. But for some reason we keep seeing Cleverly fight guys that the boxing public don’t want to see him fight. What makes this so bad is that it’s keeping Cleverly from making a name for himself.

Beating overmatched little known opponents one after another may prolong Cleverly as a champion, but it’s keeping him from winning a lot of fans. And his fight last Saturday wasn’t impressive stuff. I’m not hearing anyone talking about the fight in the American press, and that tells you that the fight was pretty much overlooked.

Bellew isn’t much better. He’s fighting some little known contender by the name of Roberto Feliciano Bolonti (30-1, 19 KO’s) for the WBC Silver light heavyweight title on the undercard of the Carl Froch – Yusaf Mack fight at Capital FM Arena, in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. The Silver strap is one of the World Boxing Council’s titles they created not too long ago, but it’s not the main strap for them. They got a bunch of titles to pass out and I’ve frankly lost track of all the trinkets they hand out. All these titles do little more than water down the sport by creating a ton of paper champions that ultimately confuses the casual boxing fans, who lose track of who the real champions are.